(Notes and disclaimers with Part One)

******

The holiday mood was getting to someone else, too. Jayne had found his way back to the dockside market area, where he'd run into Kaylee and River, and rudely brushed off their pleas to come back with them to the ship. No rutting way was he gonna get shanghaied into helping with all the Christmas doin's, no matter how prettily anyone asked. He wasn't about to cross that line--bad enough he had agreed to take part at all. Having to spend his hard-earned cash on other people was about as far as he'd go, which was a big enough sacrifice in his book.

So he skulked around the edges of the market, trying to fit his mind around the concept of gift-giving. Of giving gifts that meant something to a person--that was supposed to be the point, near as he could figure. But it was giving him a whole lot of uncomfortableness. So was contemplating how they were going to get the whole crazy thing past Mal without some serious fallout.

Then he spotted a place whose wares were right in line with his own tastes--simple, practical, and cheap. He was in and out in ten minutes, with money to spare, and eight items all crammed into one big bag, feeling mighty impressed with himself. Now he could sneak his way back onto Serenity, dump the stuff in his bunk, avoid his shipmates, and head on out for some real fun in town.

Naturally, he ran into a slight complication. As he was crossing into the main roadway back to their docking point, he saw Mal. The captain was just standing there by the roadside, still in a way that gave Jayne a cold shiver. His face had the look of a man collating some serious data.

Jayne did the math--Mal must've left the ship before the others had returned. He'd have had no clue about what they were up to, and apparently was just figuring out why the town was all prettied up. Cap'n was slow on the uptake only once in great while...but he was sure as hell puttin' two and two together now.

Instinct set Jayne to moving mere seconds before t